MOON WATCH NIGHT: UsinG Binoculars

Binoculars come with different sizes and magnifications e.g. 7x50 means 7x magnification and 50mm diameter lenses.

The bigger the lenses, the better for use in astronomy seeing faint objects.

Magnification can be good in that you can see more detail…. BUT… the higher the magnification, the more difficult it is to hold the binoculars steady. About 10x is about as high as you want to go.

One really great thing about binoculars, is that they are much cheaper than telescopes, and portable, so you can use them in the day time for other applications.

Did you take a good look at the Moon with your own eyes? You can resolve detail on the surface about 1/25^th of the Moon’s diameter. Now with binoculars at x8 magnification, you can see objects as small as 1/200^th of the Moon’s diameter, or about 17 km across.

So you should just about be able to see individual craters now, rays, and mountain ranges. Something like this….

Once again the dark grey areas are called Mare, or former cooled down pools of volcanic lava.

The lighter regions of craters are highland areas and are much older.

You can just about make out diffuse white lines, especially against the dark mare – these are crater rays.

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Webmaster: Dr Anthony Cook

Web version 2013/10/11

(Email: atc @ aber.ac.uk)